Keith Stroup recalls the most notable ‘graduate’ from my Alma Mater, Hunter S. Thompson, a long time marijuana smoker.

Hunter finished high school technically in 1955, but was unable to receive the actual diploma. Charged as an accessory to robbery after being in a car with the robber, Hunter was sentenced to 60 days in Kentucky’s Jefferson County Jail. He served 31 days but while he was in jail the school superintendent refused him permission to take his high school final examinations. As a result he did not graduate. A week after his release and one day after sinking nearly every boat in a local harbor by shooting holes beneath their waterlines, Hunter enlisted in the United States Air Force and moved into journalism from there.

Keith Stroup talks of meeting Thompson after he had covered the San Francisco hippie movement in the 60s and released a successful inside look at the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club.

“One of the serendipitous occurrences in my life was meeting the late Hunter S. Thompson, the original Gonzo journalist, in 1972, at the Democratic National Convention in Miami. Hunter was there to cover the event for Rolling Stone magazine and I was there, along with a myriad of other activists, hoping to find a way to get some national attention on the need to legalize marijuana, and to stop arresting marijuana smokers.

I had founded NORML 18 months earlier in late 1970, but few people were yet aware of our work, so we jumped in my 1961 Volkswagon camper, a common set of wheels for a would-be hippie back then, and headed to Miami to join the anti-Vietnam war activists along with proponents for all sorts of social change, from environmentalism to gay rights to workers’ rights, and everything in-between.

At the time, we didn’t have any party connections and we didn’t really have any idea of what was going to happen in Miami; but we made plans to go anyway because the prior Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968 had been a watershed moment for American political dissent. In what must be a high point in political street theater, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and the Youth International Party (the Yippies) nominated a pig for president, and captured national media attention in the process.

When I met Hunter he was smoking a joint under the bleachers at the opening night of the convention. I was sitting in the stands listening to the speeches when, quite suddenly — and without any question in my mind — I smelled marijuana, and quickly realized it was coming from down below. I looked below the bleachers and what I saw was a fairly big guy smoking a fairly fat joint. He was trying to be discreet, but it wasn’t working very well. I could see him hunkering in the shadows — tall and lanky, flailing his arms and oddly familiar. Jesus Christ, I suddenly realized, that’s Hunter S. Thompson!

Like every other young stoner in America I had read “Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas” as it was serialized a few months earlier in Rolling Stone. Hunter would soon gather great fame for himself, the kind of fame from which one can never look back upon. But on the night I met Hunter, his star was still ascending.

Screw the speeches, I thought to myself.

I quickly found my way under the bleachers and approached as politely as possible.

“Hu-uh – What the fuck?!! Who’re you?!”

“Hey, Hunter. Keith Stroup from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. We’re a new smoker’s lobby.” Easy enough.

“Oh. Oh, yeah! Yeah! Here,” Hunter held out his herb, “You want some?”
We finished that joint and started a friendship that lasted for 33 years, as Hunter became an important NORML supporter and advisory board member. Doc was a self-described political junkie and so am I, and that was the basis of our long friendship – that and a mutual predilection for fine drugs.

“I have always loved marijuana. It has been a source of joy and comfort to me for many years. And I still think of it as a basic staple of life, along with beer and ice and grapefruits – and millions of Americans agree with me.” –Dr. Hunter S. Thompson